Beijing wants to highlight what it sees as Tokyo's lack of contrition over
imperial Japan's brutal military invasion of China in the years preceding
WWII

Chancellor Angela Merkel will refuse to show the Chinese President Holocaust memorial sites when he visits Germany this month because Berlin fears that it will be drawn into an embarrassing row between Beijing and Tokyo over Japan’s perceived failure to acknowledge past war crimes

Beijing has made it clear that it wants Tokyo to adopt Germany’s attitude to war guilt and fully accept responsibility for the suffering inflicted China by Japan’s brutal military invasion of the country in 1937. China claims that Japanese troops killed 300,000 people during the conflict. An allied tribunal estimated that 142,000 died.

China’s President XI Jinping had planned to make an official tour of Second World War memorial sites in Germany when he visits the country later this month in order to highlight Japan’s alleged failure to acknowledge its war guilt.

Der Spiegel magazine reported Tuesday that Chancellor Angela Merkel had turned down President Xi Jinping’s request for her to join him on what he apparently hoped would be an official visit to Berlin’s football field-sized Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe – the city’s largest Holocaust memorial site.

Mrs Merkel was also said to have turned down a request for her to accompany the Chinese President on a visit to Berlin’s Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism which stands on the city’s main Unter den Linden boulevard.

German government sources told Der Spiegel that Berlin wanted to avoid becoming involved in a dispute over war guilt which was currently straining relations between Beijing and Tokyo. However a spokesman insisted that president Xi Jinping was “ welcome” to visit Germany’s Second World War memorial sites in his own time.

China has recently drawn unflattering comparisons between Germany’s atonement for Second World War crimes and Japan’s alleged reticence over the issue. To highlight German contrition, Chinese state television recently showed footage of former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s famous 1970 visit to the site of the Warsaw Ghetto where he fell to his knees to demonstrate Germany’s will to atone.

German sources said Beijing clearly saw President Xi Jinping’s Berlin visit as an opportunity to embarrass Japan. But an unnamed German diplomatic source told Reuters earlier this year: “the Germans are really uncomfortable with this kind of thing. The don’t like China constantly comparing them with Japan and going on about the war.”

Despite Beijing’s criticism, Japan has repeatedly apologised for the suffering it inflicted on China in 1937 and during its Second World War occupation of the country. But contradictory comments by conservative politicians have continued to fuel the dispute and cast doubt on Tokyo’s sincerity.

Tensions between both countries increased late last year when the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine. China claims the site is a symbol of Japanese militarism because it honours wartime leaders along with millions of war dead.

China’s accusations that Japan has failed to acknowledge the suffering it caused in China has raised concern in Tokyo government circles. A Japanese government spokesman stressed that reconciliation required not only gestures of atonement, but also the former victim’s “acceptance” of such gestures.